Iraq War as a signaling strategy for US power relations

Over at the group blog Open Left, Dave Meyer offers up some additional observations on the Bush administration’s recently revealed military propaganda program, while putting its disastrous consequences into some historical context. In particular, the Nixon administration’s propaganda campaign during the Vietnam War is discussed, as well as a running commentary of some of the late philosopher Hannah Arendt’s thoughts on the “enterprise of war.”

Also, the Matt Ygleias coined “Green Lantern Theory” of geopolitics is brought in for some quick analysis: It is the fallacious argument employed by the current generation of Hawks that posits “All that is required to win (Iraq) is for the US to demonstrate enough willpower.” Of course, this makes no sense at all, yet it has demonstratively been chillingly effective as a rationale to indefinitely continue the illegal military occupation of Iraq, again with no strategy or endgame on the table.

Again, as I mentioned in my previous post, the idea here is for the US as the world’s remaining superpower to “signal” to the rest of the world that we will protect our already irredeemably tarnished image in the world by staying in Iraq forever. Or, put another way, preventing damage to Americas image has been the strategic rationale behind the surge and all of Bush’s post 9/11 foreign policy interventions.

Meyer quite correctly observes here that “Simply put, democracies shouldn’t fight public relations wars. It perverts our democracy and it leads to disaster. The military is not a marketing firm; treating the troops like an armed Amway sales force puts them in an untenable position.”

He also points out what is now a commonplace yet essential reality in 21st Century American life: That for the Bush Administration and the neocon dreamers-cum-foreign policymakers who are advocating we stay in Iraq until we somehow “win”, “Replacing public diplomacy with armed public relations makes sense to them.”